Diaspora vows continued pressure on Turkey for resolution of missing persons

Representatives of the diaspora on Thursday pledged continue to work within their respective adopted countries to keep piling the pressure on Turkey to hand over more information as regards the Cypriot missing persons.

The overseas delegates were briefed on the latest work by the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) and what the Cyprus government is doing to try and close that chapter of the island’s history.

They were told that despite finding almost half the number of missing persons, the work cannot proceed at a fast pace due to Turkish actions such as the destruction of burial sites and the deliberate moving of remains, and that international support on this issue was vitally important.

Humanitarian Affairs Commissioner Anna Aristotelous told the conference: “Our vision is to have no missing persons, to achieve the peaceful coexistence of all citizens and sustainable peace and unity that promotes respect for human dignity for everyone”.

The main goal, she said, was to ascertain the fate of every missing person who disappeared during the Turkish invasion in 1974 and the inter-communal conflicts of the period 1963-1964.

More than half of missing persons cases are still pending to this day, she added.

Part of the process of uncovering more information that will lead to identifications, she said, was to encourage people who may have information to speak up. Every report is investigated.

“We have developed a citizen-friendly communication network since we no longer use the methods of taking a statement that were in place previously, which refer to police mindsets with an investigative profile. By changing the approach to be more citizen- friendly, the flow of information increased with positive results and already in one month we had four identifications,” Aristotelous said.

Addressing the Diaspora, she said that their contribution and role was of great importance “because you carry Cyprus within you, because you are the best ambassadors of our homeland”, she said.

Also, for the first time, her office has broken down the numbers to reflect how many women and children are on the list of missing persons.

Specifically, there are 118 missing women, of which 26 have been identified, and of the 32 missing children, 16 have been identified, the youngest being six months old.

In total there are 1,510 missing Greek Cypriots of whom 741 have been identified and there are 492 missing Turkish Cypriots of whom 292 have been identified.

The president of the Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons in the UK, Neoclis Neocleous told the conference that Turkey should provide the information it is holding on to information regarding the events of 1974. He said the international community also needed to exert pressure on Turkey. “We all should,” he said.

“Young people are essential for this, but we must be very careful not to lose the existing process which, despite the difficulties and slow progress, managed to ascertain the fate of almost half of the missing persons,” he added.